Meet CJ, the Chocolate Labrador Retriever 'taking classes' at Dickson County High School

Dickson County High School recently welcomed a four-legged student on campus.

CJ, the school’s new 11-week-old Chocolate Labrador Retriever, will work alongside students enrolled in the criminal justice career and technical education pathway.

The puppy still has a few more weeks of training to complete before heading into the classroom, Dickson County High School Criminal Justice Career and Technical Teacher John Patterson said, noting that CJ will live and train with him over the next six to eight weeks

“He’s doing really well, just about mastered going to the bathroom outside, sits and waits for his food, stays,” said Patterson, who previously worked as a K-9 law enforcement officer. “He’s very smart and takes up on a lot of things.”

Started 'kind of like a joke’

The idea of a dog in the classroom came from a casual conversation between colleagues, Patterson said.

He and Leslie Sims, another criminal justice career and technical teacher at the high school, saw an advertisement for a robotic dog during a recent in-service training, leading one of them to suggest getting one for the school.

“The way this all started was actually kind of like a joke… and that was about it. And then she was mentioning it to a friend of hers that owns Cane Creek Kennels and the friend said, ‘Well you know what, we’ve got a dog for you’,” Patterson said.

“Leslie and I talked about it and said, ‘Well, yeah, this is something we could do.'”

School officials were able to meet CJ for the first time during a football game late last month, where Principal Joey Holley gave CJ, Criminal Justice for short, his name.

The students were apprehensive about bringing CJ into the school at first but have since warmed up to him, Patterson said, adding that he’s even seen some new faces around the classroom.

“Initially... they were under the impression that CJ was going to get trained and stand at the front door and sniff kids when they came in the door, but that’s not the case,” Patterson said.

“And once they realized that, the students actually love him. I’m kind of jealous because I used to walk down the hallway and people would say, ‘Hey Coach Pat, how are you doing,’ but now it’s always, ‘Hey CJ’… he’s getting all the attention.”

What will CJ do?

CJ will provide the high school's criminal justice students with a hands-on learning approach to a number of scenarios they may face in the field upon employment.

“We just thought it’d be another avenue for the students,” Patterson said. He also said the students will have to work to motivate CJ and be able to recognize his indicators when performing jobs.

“What we were looking at was the dog not to go around sniffing students and stuff like that, but a dog that our criminal justice students could work, like we hide pseudo drugs — fake drugs that give off the same scent or aroma of real drugs — and the students would have to work the dog to try to find the drugs.”

Examples of these fake drugs include marijuana, carts, vapes and nicotine.

“Things that he might find on a high school or college campus,” Patterson said.

CJ’s recent enrollment hasn't only benefitted the criminal justice students.

“He’s got such a great temperament with the students, he’s so affectionate and loving. It’s just great… we’ve even had him go down and spend time with our SPED (Special Education) kids and they love him,” Patterson said.

Dickson County High isn't the only school that's benefitted from welcoming canines.

The Lebanon Special School District recently received their own law enforcement K-9, a three-year-old German Shorthaired Pointer named Blaze, the Tennessean previously reported.

Blaze’s origin story is nothing like that of CJ’s. Blaze and Wilson County Sheriff’s Deputy Dusty Burton joined the district after an incident at Winfree Bryant Middle School in February. A gun was brought into the school and went undetected until the latter part of the day, prompting concern from parents and school officials.

A one-of-a-kind partnership

Students enrolled in Tennessee public high schools are required to complete an elective focus consisting of three credits in math and science, career and technical education, fine arts, humanities, advanced placement or international baccalaureate, according to tn.gov.

Career and technical education courses lead the way in Dickson County, with nearly 83% of Dickson County high school students taking a CTE course as their elective focus choice, according to the schools' website.

The high school's criminal justice CTE course is rooted in law, public safety, corrections and security and offers students a three-year, in-class program with an optional fourth year of work-based learning, Patterson said.

“In the last 10 years, we’ve placed 63 students in law enforcement, all the way up to federal law enforcement. We’ve got one with the Marshall’s Office, Highway Patrol, local agencies,” he said.

“It’s a good place for them to come to see if they want to go into law enforcement and the local agencies have really been receptive to looking at hiring some of our students.”

CJ may be one of the first of his kind in the state.

“We stay in contact with other criminal justice programs, and we’ve never heard of one, so I would venture to say we probably are the first to have a dog that the students work," Patterson said.

Katie Nixon can be reached at knixon@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Why a Middle Tennessee high school is training a K-9 puppy for class